Author Rebecca J. Carlson shares how to be a successful writer at a book signing of her “Barley and Rye” series
BYU–Hawaii adjunct faculty member Rebecca J. Carlson is a published children's author who said writing and eventually getting her books published was no simple task. But she said she learned much about the process and shared steps on how to be a successful author. She said, “Words are magic. I really, really love all the opportunities I’ve had to write and learn about writing. I just love studying the craft. And I especially love being able to share my words with other people.”
In the chair-filled space of the Aloha Center, students, faculty, community members and their children gathered during the Winter 2023 Semester to hear Carlson talk about her journey to become a published author. Carlson’s young readers’ series is called “Barley and Rye,” of which there are currently three volumes. The fantasy series begins with two brothers named Barley and Rye, who live in a village at the edge of a forest that harbors a band of robbers.
The robbers sometimes steal children and force them to work in their castle. When Rye is stolen away, Barley goes out to look for him, on an adventure in a land of witches, castles and magic swords. The first book in the series entitled “The Adventures of Lost Castle,” was published in 2019, but originated as a story Carlson said she wrote years ago as a gift for her son, Daniel’s, ninth birthday. It was followed by two sequels, “The Curses of Lost Forest,” and “The Wizard of Frogsmire.”
Influences
Carlson told the story of how she went from loving fairy tales to becoming an author of her own. She said she and her sister, Rachel Hoffman, loved fairy tales as children, as she pointed to an image projected on the wall of the two of them when they were young.
“As we grew up, I loved to write stories and my sister loved to draw. So we thought someday we were going to make books together.
“But then,” Carlson continued, “we found out that out in the real world, you don’t get to choose that yourself. The publishers decide.” After understanding the way the publishing world worked, Carlson said she and Hoffman decided they would establish their careers independently with the hope of one day collaborating on a book.
“I love folktales and fairy tales. I’ve read so many collections from all over the world. So I drew on folklore elements, mostly European, a little bit Asian, to craft this world and this story that goes by fairy tale rules,” said Carlson.
She said she had Scottish, Irish, Welsh and British ancestry, and said much of the folklore from those regions played into her writing later on, particularly in the “Barley and Rye” series.
“I would say ‘The Hobbit’ was a very big influence. I read that when I was in third grade and that was the year I decided I wanted to be a writer of stories myself. … The stories that I’ve told aloud to my children when they were young also figure into my “Barley and Rye” books. And when I find a really good folk tale, I find some way to work it in,” said Carlson.
Maggie Bulkley, a junior from Idaho majoring in English with a creative writing emphasis, said she has not yet had an opportunity to read any of the “Barley and Rye” books but is excited to delve into the fantastical elements contained in them.
“I am very excited to read these, just because I love any kind of fantasy book for any age.” For Bulkley, a good fantasy book needs to be able to have a magical effect on its reader. “Fantasy to me is a place you can go to not be in reality. That’s why it’s fantasy. … It is a place where there are dragons, and wizards, and goblins, and heroes and swords." Bulkley continued, "It has always been a safe space for me, and I think a lot of people can relate to that because sometimes we just want magic in the world."
In Bulkley’s own creative process, she said she tries to read a lot of fantasy books for inspiration. “I love to read, and I love to world-build. I love looking at the world around me and thinking, ‘How can I make this fantastical?’”
Carlson shared with the audience how to be a successful author in five “easy” steps, only to emphasize becoming a successful author was anything but easy. “But it is fun,” she said, “and exciting, and challenging, and I have loved it.”
Steps to Become a Successful Author
Read
Carlson asked attendees what they liked to read, saying a love of reading was integral to becoming a good writer. Carlson cited what one of her favorite creative writing teachers had told her, “You can’t write a book that’s better than the best book you read in the last six months.”
“Reading helps you get that rhythm of the words into your mind,” she added.
Write
“Write a lot,” she told the audience. “I love writing fiction. I’ve also written some memoirs, and also some historical anecdotes and some poetry. I like to write lots and lots of different things. It’s good if you have a favorite thing to write a lot, but also write widely. Try other things and that will help you grow your writing skills.”
Carlson displayed an image showing her writing room, a desk with a large bulletin board on the wall in front of it. The bulletin board in the photograph was covered with sticky notes containing various plot points and character sketches, all products of her writing process.
“Drafting is one thing, but then you need to go back and revise.” She then showed the audience a slide displaying just three typed pages of a draft of her “Barley and Rye” book, covered from top to bottom in scrawled revisions written in pen. “I made a lot of changes and a lot of notes to myself, going through several times, and then rewriting.”
She then had the audience members take part in an activity to use their five senses to describe something in words. The writing process, according to Carlson, transformed the world a person inhabited into words and needed to be described so the reader could get a clear picture of what the characters are experiencing.
Beyond the five senses of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell, Carlson said emotions, movement and internal sensation were also senses that could be used to describe experiences in the real world through words.
“When you use these senses to describe things, you’re touching memories in your readers’ brains that will really bring what you’re writing to life.”
Get feedback
“For any skill that you are trying to develop, the feedback is super important. It should be timely feedback,” she clarified. Within a few days of writing, Carlson said it was a good idea to look it over again or get someone else to look it over and offer their thoughts. Feedback can come from friends and family, she said. Carlson said she showed the first novel she ever wrote to her friends, from which she said she gathered powerful advice that improved her writing.
Other good sources of feedback authors can have are other writers, she continued, along with teachers and industry professionals who possess years of experience.
Find your tribe
“This is really important for writers,” Carlson said. “Because as a writer you’re spending a lot of time sitting by yourself in a chair with a screen in front of you, and you don’t necessarily get a lot of human interaction. Unless you find some other writers to hang out with and write with you.”
Carlson explained how she became a part of several writing clubs and organizations made up of people who loved to read and write. With the help of her daughter and friends in their neighborhood, she started the Laie Young Writers’ Club 10 years ago. The friends would get together once a week and read whatever they had been writing. She said she managed to use her connections to get friends who were also authors to join the club via Zoom. One of the guest speakers was acclaimed author Brandon Sanderson. Sanderson is an American author of high fantasy and science fiction and a member of the Church who attended BYU in Provo. He is best known for the "Cosmere" fictional universe, in which most of his fantasy novels, most notably the "Mistborn" series and "The Stormlight Archive."
Share your work
Carlson clarified, if a person wanted to write purely for the enjoyment of it, it was perfectly alright. They did not need to feel like they had to share their work with the world. However, if someone wanted to get their work published, she said sharing it with others was part of the process.
The first short story she published was entitled “Rumpelstiltskin Does Cold Fusion,” published in BYU in Provo’s science fiction magazine, "The Leading Edge," in the year 2000. She said the check she received for the story was signed by none other than Brandon Sanderson, because he was the editor of "The Leading Edge" at the time.
She has had her writing published in the church’s Friend magazine, Costco Connections and BYU Magazine, but she maintained her original goal was to write children’s books. Through the wish of her son, Daniel, she wrote what would become the first book in “Barley and Rye.”
According to Carlson, her son requested the story contained a map, a magic sword, a warrior and a rescue. The book was presented to Daniel for his birthday with illustrations done by Carlson in felt-tip pen, and then put aside as she worked on other writing projects.
Years later, she joined a publisher whose goal was to have various authors retell fairy tales in a shared fictional universe. The publisher asked if she had any material suited for a middle-grade audience, which made Carlson think of the story she wrote for her son. The publisher responded enthusiastically, according to her, although they asked her to make the final book four times as long.
In November 2019, “Barley and Rye: The Adventure of Lost Castle” was published by Idaho-based publisher Fiction Vortex.
When the pandemic hit, Carlson said her publisher had to close their doors after publishing her second book, but she was responsible for marketing it. Meanwhile, her sister had become a professional illustrator, doing work for the Friend, picture books and other magazine covers. After the publisher closed their doors, Carlson reached out to her sister to become the illustrator for a new edition of her book and its sequels. “It was so much fun to be able to do this with my sister. It made up for all the sadness of losing my publisher.”
Carlson now works with a small, independent publisher, Far Away Books, with her sister, Rachel Hoffman, serving as the illustrator.
Making a good story
Takara McBride, a senior student from Hawaii majoring in English with an emphasis in creative writing, said she is in the process of writing her own fantasy stories. She said Carlson’s advice inspired her to keep on writing, saying she had been going through a bit of a slump.
“I feel like as we get older, we lose that magic, or the whimsy of life, because we get so busy. Things go downhill [and] they go uphill so constantly. I feel like indulging in fiction just for even a little bit can really help. Just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean all of it’s fake. We enjoy fiction because the characters feel real,” McBride explained. “The things they go through feel real to us."
She continued, “Honestly, if you feel like you’re having a tough time with something and want to get something off your mind, read some fiction. … It really does help, and I think that you might be able to find something out about yourself.”
When creating characters in her books, Carlson said she sometimes has a person in mind to reference when writing. “I like to really observe people and think about people. When I’m in a crowd, I’m often the quiet one, because I’m just listening to everybody and observing and processing what they’re doing, and how they’re doing it.”
She said she also tries to get inside the heads of her characters, going through the fictional backstory she has created for them, to get a better sense of the choices they would make or the things they would say.
Carlson taught the audience that in order to make a character memorable, the character had to have some distinct identifying feature, collected under the umbrella term “funny hats."
She said, “You want [the reader] to have a [very clear and distinct] picture in their head of that character, so every time that character comes onto the page, they know exactly who you’re talking about.”
She pulled out a faded copy of J.K. Rowling’s bestseller “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,” and read the author’s description of a character who was identified by his bald head and looked like “a toothless walnut.”
She had the audience members look around the room and find distinguishing characteristics in the people they saw as if they were going to describe in a book. “This is much more powerful than just a character’s name, especially if you’ve got a big cast in your book.”
She added, in order to avoid writer’s block, one must have multiple ideas to work on, so they are always being productive, even if they do not know where one of the stories they are working on is going in terms of plot. “If I’m stuck on a particular story, I set it aside and don’t worry about it and then come back to it later, because there’s always some other project.”
The third book in the “Barley and Rye” series, “The Wizard of Frogsmire,” is eligible for a Whitney Award, an accolade designed to honor literature written by Latter-day Saint authors. According to the official website, the awards were named after Orson F. Whitney, an apostle in the early days of the Restoration, who said the church would have writers comparable to John Milton and William Shakespeare.
Speaking on the discouragement she had faced when she was writing, Carlson recalled, “There were years when I thought, ‘If I was going to be able to do this, I would have done it by now.’ Never think that, because you don’t know what’s coming around the corner and you don’t know what will happen if you keep trying.”
Her books can be found at the BYUH Bookstore, BarnesandNoble.com, Amazon.com, and Bookshop.org, a website she said supports small bookstores with each purchase.
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